‘Margaret!’

For an instant she looked up; and then sought to veil her luminous eyes by dropping her forehead on her hands.  Again, stepping nearer, he besought her with another tremulous eager call upon her name.

‘Margaret!’

Still lower went the head; more closely hidden was the face, almost resting on the table before her.  He came close to her.  He knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level with her ear; and whispered-panted out the words:—­

’Take care.—­If you do not speak—­I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way.—­Send me away at once, if I must go;—­Margaret!—­’

At that third call she turned her face, still covered with her small white hands, towards him, and laid it on his shoulder, hiding it even there; and it was too delicious to feel her soft cheek against his, for him to wish to see either deep blushes or loving eyes.  He clasped her close.  But they both kept silence.  At length she murmured in a broken voice: 

‘Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!’

’Not good enough!  Don’t mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.’

After a minute or two, he gently disengaged her hands from her face, and laid her arms as they had once before been placed to protect him from the rioters.

‘Do you remember, love?’ he murmured.  ’And how I requited you with my insolence the next day?’

‘I remember how wrongly I spoke to you,—­that is all.’

‘Look here!  Lift up your head.  I have something to show you!’ She slowly faced him, glowing with beautiful shame.

‘Do you know these roses?’ he said, drawing out his pocket-book, in which were treasured up some dead flowers.

‘No!’ she replied, with innocent curiosity.  ’Did I give them to you?’

’No!  Vanity; you did not.  You may have worn sister roses very probably.’

She looked at them, wondering for a minute, then she smiled a little as she said—­

’They are from Helstone, are they not?  I know the deep indentations round the leaves.  Oh! have you been there?  When were you there?’

’I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.  I went there on my return from Havre.’

‘You must give them to me,’ she said, trying to take them out of his hand with gentle violence.

‘Very well.  Only you must pay me for them!’

‘How shall I ever tell Aunt Shaw?’ she whispered, after some time of delicious silence.

‘Let me speak to her.’

‘Oh, no!  I owe to her,—­but what will she say?’

‘I can guess.  Her first exclamation will be, “That man!"’

‘Hush!’ said Margaret, ’or I shall try and show you your mother’s indignant tones as she says, “That woman!"’